


Not Your Gift to Give

by Pagestealer



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: M/M, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25436257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pagestealer/pseuds/Pagestealer
Summary: What exactly happed when Joe and Nicky were being experimented on in Merrick's lab.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova
Comments: 17
Kudos: 186





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All characters belong to Greg Rucka and Gina Prince-Blythewood. Only borrowing with respect. Excuse the Google translated languages. And my second ever fic, so again…bear with me. 
> 
> I really wanted to see something about Joe and Nicky’s time being experimented on but NOBODY is writing it. So I took matters into my own hands…ha. I’m changing the film plot a bit. Assuming Andy, Nile and Booker came to rescue them, not the way it went in the film.
> 
> I have three more chapters. Anybody want them?

Their limp bodies were dragged into the lab and one by one they were lifted onto the gurneys and strapped in to make escape impossible. Dr. Kozak immediately got to work, first on Nicky then Joe, attaching sensors and inserting IVs, getting them prepped for what was about to happen. She wanted to get started quickly before the sedatives wore off. She had no idea how long it would affect them, if their bodies would expel the drugs, if their metabolisms worked more quickly. So many questions. She couldn’t wait to start digging for the answers. Kozak didn’t consider herself a sadist, of course not, but also she didn’t consider herself naïve. She was a pragmatist, a realist. This was no time to be squeamish. This could be the breakthrough the modern world was waiting for, the game changer that eradicated disease and suffering. She was willing to do whatever it took to get the human race to that point. These men were the stepping stones and she couldn’t get hung up on ethics or sentiment.  
Kozak was so excited she didn’t know where to begin. Should she focus on one man at a time? Should she perform duplicates of each experiment, each sample taken, to see if the subjects reacted differently? Should she start small, make sure they really were indestructible? Or take big swings straight out of the gate? Her head was swimming. Could they regenerate limbs? Could they survive a severed head? Could they die of blood loss, or would they heal too quickly for that to be an issue? Where to even start? The basics. That’s where she should start. Nothing fancy. She needs baseline blood pressure and temperature, blood samples, DNA swabs; let’s see how their genetic makeup compares to the average person. 

\---

Nicky began to stir first. He felt the tug of a needle in his hand, in his arm. He heard beeping, steady yet insistent. He was lightheaded and as he opened his eyes his vision swam for a moment before coming into focus. He saw the doctor hovering nearby, her back to him. She turned around, a scalpel in her hand. He felt his heartbeat accelerate, which was confirmed by the steady beeping of the heart monitor picking up in intensity. She noticed his alertness and began talking to him. He tuned her out at first, turning his head to try and find Joe, to make sure they had not been separated while unconscious. Craning to the left, his heart rate evened out a bit when he saw Joe lying on an identical gurney not 5 feet from him. So close but not close enough to touch, to reassure him that Joe was alright. Joe did not look alright, still unconscious and hooked up with numerous wires to machines and medical equipment. Nicky tuned back in to the doctor, who was saying, “Don’t worry, he’s fine. I have many questions for you two. Perhaps we can save you a little pain if you are forthcoming.” Nicky scoffed, shifted, and groaned slightly. She continued, “I have big plans for you. Merrick demands results and I’m all too happy to work day and night until I can give them to him. I’ve already taken some basic samples from both of you. While my lab techs start analyzing them, I would like to continue on and dig a little deeper. I’m already intrigued by the fact that you woke up first. Do you consider yourself to have a stronger constitution than your companion there?” Nicky chuckled softly and said, “No one is stronger than him.” He turned his gaze back to Joe, a softness in his eyes reserved only for that view. Kozak frowned slightly. “Not helpful,” she said. “I will not hesitate to take what I need to find my answers. Merrick has no regard for your lives and I assure you, neither do I. I’m not a cruel person but this is bigger than all of us. I’ll get my answers. By any means possible. The fate of the world is at stake.” 

\---

Beside Nicky, Joe started to stir. In Italian, Nicky immediately called out to him, reassuring him, letting him know he was right here beside him. Joe’s eyes blinked open and he took in the room, the doctor, and Nicky in one long sweep. He shifted in his restraints then huffed in annoyance and flopped his head back. He turned to Kozak and said, “Dr. Frankenstein, I presume. Where’s Igor?” Nicky smirked his amusement. After a thousand years, even in such dire circumstances, it was a little hard to take such things seriously. Or at least to give this moment the gravitas the good doctor seemed to be expecting. Yes, it seemed like torture and death were in their immediate future. But pain was only temporary. Andy and Booker would come for them. Until then, they had each other. They weren’t alone and they weren’t scared. Mostly. Kozak frowned again. “Very well, let’s get started then,” she said. “Who would like to go first?” 

Kozak was eager to begin and if these gentlemen were going to be so blasé about this, she had no qualms in diving in exuberantly. She turned to Joe with the scalpel. Beside her, Nicky stiffened slightly. She noticed this and realized these men may be brave about their own lives but there was something more here. Her eyes darted between them, at the way they locked eyes, at the muttered Italian. They seemed to care deeply for each other. Perhaps as comrades in arms, perhaps something more. It didn’t matter much to her. But maybe she could use this. She turned back to Nicky. “I am going to cut into him now,” she said as she nodded towards Joe. “If you can tell me how all this works, perhaps I can spare him some pain. Would you like to tell me how you got this way, what the rules are?” Nicky looked at her silently for a long beat. “We don’t know,” he said simply. “Shame,” said Kozak, turning back to Joe. Both men tensed simultaneously. Joe pulled at the bands holding his harms futilely. They didn’t budge. “Relax,” Kozak said. “I’m going to start small.” She put one hand on Joe’s abdomen and brought the scalpel to his skin with the other. She sliced deeply and Joe tensed and groaned ever so softly. Kozak held her breath as she watched the wound seal up in a matter of seconds. She sliced again, deeper. Again, it healed immediately. She wondered to herself if she would be able to remove organs. If the subjects healed up this quickly, perhaps she wouldn’t have time to extract anything before it sealed back up. She might have to come up with a way to keep their wounds forced open.... She pondered this as she sliced again and again, deeper, and then in different spots on Joe’s body. He was soon covered in small rivulets of blood, and gasping softly from the extended pain. At first he was watching his wounds open and close, but now he had turned his head to lock eyes with Nicky, who stared back unwaveringly. After several minutes of this, of Joe breathing more and more heavily, Nicky called out “Enough! It’s my turn.” Kozak turned to him, a bit dazed. “Of course,” she said. “Of course, we need to make sure results are comparable for both of you.” She turned back to Nicky, grabbing a new scalpel off a medical cart and started in on him, slowly and tentatively at first, same as with Joe, and then more and more vigorously. Joe kept his eyes locked on Nicky’s the whole time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All characters belong to Greg Rucka and Gina Prince-Blythewood. Only borrowing with respect. Excuse the Google translated languages.

Finally satisfied, Kozak decided to start taking some deeper samples: lung tissue, cerebral fluid, bone marrow. She almost pitied the men—she knew how painful spinal taps were. They tried not to scream, but they were only human. (Or were they? This was all so fascinating.) She bled them to see how long it would last. To see how long she could make it last. Like Booker had said, they could still hurt, and several times the men passed out from the pain. Several more times, Kozak found ways to kill them, however briefly. They would each jerk awake, gasping back to life or to consciousness several times over the next few hours. Each time, they would glance over to make sure the other was still there. The fact that they couldn’t touch each other, their oldest and easiest way to communicate, even hold each other’s hand through this, infuriated them. But they could lock eyes. They could speak volumes with just a glance, a nod. Still, sometimes they were awake together but more often one would be unconscious or worse, dead, while the other pleaded, in English, Italian, Arabic, for him to wake up. The doctor largely ignored them, coming and going with her samples, conferring with her lab techs. It seemed her joy in discovery would never be sated. 

Eventually, Kozak decided it was time to move on to amputation and organ removal. She would start small with the limbs—if they didn’t grow back, she didn’t want to ruin the test subjects. She grabbed a small gigli saw and approached Nicky. She would start with a finger. If it didn’t grow back, it would hardly be missed. She did it quickly, feeling nothing herself, ignoring the screams of both men. She dropped the finger quickly into a specimen jar and stared intently at the bleeding stump on Nicky’s hand. The blood slowly drip-dripped to the floor. She really should have put some towels down, she mused. This had all gotten very messy and she didn’t want to slip. She waited while Nicky stifled a moan. Joe watched them both intently. Then, ever so slowly, she saw movement. The finger seemed to be growing back, the bone expanding out, flesh and tendon knitting back together. She gasped softly. This would mean so much. Imagine the things they could do for amputees, for organ transplants. Forget the Nobel Prize. This meant so much more. They would invent a new award for her. She set the specimen jar aside to study the finger later. Would it try and regenerate in some way too? Would it have any secrets to tell? And did this mean they could survive decapitation? She wasn’t sure she wanted to risk that. Merrick would kill her, literally kill her, if she accidentally killed either of her subjects. So she wouldn’t worry about that right now. 

She turned to Joe with delight. Time to make sure their organs re-grew in the same way. She had decided to cut into his chest cavity and use forceps to try and keep the incision open long enough to cut out an organ, his liver or spleen to start. She approached him, saying “I’m sorry we can’t use anesthesia for this next part but we really need to see how everything affects you physiologically. We’re tracking your BP, temperature, pulse, brain waves. You understand.” “Screw you,” muttered Joe. Kozak began cutting, moving quickly. This would be easier with assistants but she didn’t trust anyone else with this part of it. She wanted to do it all. Joe began screaming almost immediately. Nicky was shouting at him, shouting to be heard, “Guardami! Guardami, va bene, stai bene, amore mio.” The incision was already trying to heal up at the edges. She forced several large forceps into the space she had created to try and keep the ragged hole open and reached in to cut out the first organ she came to. Blood was pouring out of the open wound and Joe had stopped screaming. His eyelids fluttered and the machines he was hooked up to were now screaming rapidly instead, seemingly louder than Joe had been, than Nicky was. She lifted the kidney out with a small happy gasp, then glanced up at the heart monitor just as it started a steady, loud beep. Flatline. The subject had not survived the extraction. Nicky cried out with a frustrated sob. Kozak turned and set the kidney down in a pan on the medical cart next to Joe’s gurney. She couldn’t wait to start examining it, but first she leaned forward to stare intently at the still open cavity in Joe’s side. Now that he was dead, with the wound still forced open, would it heal the same, at the same rate? Would it heal at all? Or would she have to remove the impediment first? She watched as the wound gradually started to close. It looked like his body was trying to push the forceps out. Fascinating. So this is probably what would happen with knives and bullets, yes? Kozak mused to herself as she watched the forceps continue to ease out and eventually clatter onto the floor. She turned to Nicky and asked, “Do all foreign objects get pushed out of your body? Is that what happens to the bullets if you are shot, for example?” Nicky just stared at her dully, eyes glassy with unshed tears. She sighed and turned back to Joe’s monitor, waiting for the flatline to end, for the beeping to start back up. She and Nicky waited together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translated Italian: Guardami! Guardami, va bene, stai bene, amore mio. “Look at me, it’s okay, you’re okay my love.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All characters belong to Greg Rucka and Gina Prince-Blythewood. Only borrowing with respect.  
> Want to see more? Let me know in the comments. : )

Hours later Joe and Nicky were finally left alone as Kozak sat in the next room, going over results and studying samples. Their monitors beeped softly, IV lines dripping in the quiet room. They breathed in unison, savoring the respite from pain and degradation. How long had it been since they had been brought here? How much longer would they have to wait for the others to find them? They were almost a thousand years old. They knew how to wait. They could wait a bit longer. As they lay strapped to their gurneys, covered in their own dried blood, they murmured between themselves, memories of the past, plans for the future. Hope tinged with fear, with melancholy. They know nothing is promised.  
Kozak left them alone for hours; they even slept a little. But when she comes back into the room, fervor renewed, new ideas of how to slice them up glinting in her eyes, they both try not to tense up. Joe is past trying to crack jokes or mock the situation. Now he’s just tired, tired of being carved up, tired of dying, and most of all, tired of watching Nicky suffer, hearing him cry out, seeing him die. They both watch Kozak warily as she hurriedly walks back in. She is wondering now if they can die of hunger, of thirst. She’s wondering if Merrick will have the patience to let her test that now or if she should wait. Her immediate plan though is testing if they can be infected, if illness can kill them. Will they get sick and die or will their bodies heal before disease can take hold. She is eager to know, eager to get back to work. There’s only one way to find out. 

\---

Kozak injected both Nicky and Joe with a potent mix of diseases so that she could study the effects and the rate of infection and how it would differ between them, if at all. This had been one of her biggest questions, if disease would take. She suspected that they would recover, that their bodies would heal themselves before the end. Now to find out.  
It started with fevers. Both men’s bodies were wracked with fevers within 30 minutes. Their heart rates and blood pressure went through the roof. Then Nicky started seizing. Kozak doled out anti-seizure medicine into his IV to try and keep this from being the thing that killed him. She wanted to ride this out as long as they could. Joe wasn’t seizing, which was interesting. Plaintively, he cried out to Nicky, begging him to fight, to just breathe, as he seized again and again. “Nicolo, Nicolo, va bene amore mio.” Eventually the seizures stopped and Nicky slipped into a coma, his temperature skyrocketing. Joe remained awake, shivering and weeping for Nicky, even after his loves’ death. Joe slipped away soon after, his temperature rising too high, his organs shutting down. Interesting. She hadn’t been expecting that. Why didn’t they heal in the same way as from injury? That would have to be explored deeper. Also, she needed to get in touch with Merrick’s guards. She needed to experiment with violent deaths. Shoot them, stab them, strangle them, drown them, beat them. Not things she felt comfortable doing herself but things she was very keen to observe and record. Kozak shuffled off to make some notes leaving the men to gasp awake once again. How much longer, they wondered? How much longer until their family came for them?

\---

The noise of a bone saw woke Joe and Nicky from a fitful slumber. They had fallen asleep reminiscing about their time in the south of France. 1840s. They had taken a few years off, away from Andy and Booker, (still quite new to them at the time) and settled down in a small villa in a sun-soaked valley. They had made a little life there, one of many over the years. They had woven themselves into the village life, walking to the local market every few days, being friendly with the neighbors (while never getting too close). They spent long days swimming in the small river near their house. Evenings making love with the windows thrown open to the soft night breeze, letting the fireflies float in on the wind. They cooked together, weaving around each other in the kitchen like a dance. They read together, quietly side by side under the olive trees. Laid out under the stars, staring at the constellations, pointing out the differences in the stars, how they had changed since when they met on that battlefield so long ago. They both knew they would have to move on eventually, before people started asking questions. But they were happy, so happy. It was maybe the happiest they had been. 

\---

The bone saw buzzed angrily. Kozak had decided she wanted to get some brain biopsies out of the way. The blood and DNA samples she had accumulated so far had not yielded the results she was hoping for. And if she didn’t get results, Merrick didn’t get results. And if Merrick didn’t get results…well, she didn’t want to think about what that might mean for her. She had thought that she would see some genetic anomalies, something that would crack open this mystery, the secrets of immortality. But so far, nothing. Nothing was abnormal. Her samples were just ordinary samples. These men appeared like ordinary men. Ridiculous! She had seen them die and come back to life numerous times. She had watched their wounds close up in seconds before her very eyes. Why was everything coming back normal? Merrick wouldn’t like that. She didn’t like that. Why couldn’t she find anything? It was frustrating. And now she felt like taking her frustrations out on the men strapped down in front of her. It was time to cut into these men’s skulls and play with their brains. The answers had to be there. They had to. 

Joe and Nicky were so tired. Dying, and reviving, and hurting and healing, over and over again. It was exhausting. Any sleep they could get was uneasy and quickly interrupted. They were rarely left alone long enough to truly fall into each other, to take a moment to regroup. But they continuously checked in with each other, murmuring to each other, closing that distance between the two tables with locked eyes, soft smiles. They were okay, as long as they were together. They just had to hang on.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is--the final chapter. Sorry it's so very short. Almost more of an epilogue.

Joe and Nicky both raised their heads at the distant sound of gunshots. Ah, they knew who that must be. Finally. How long had it been? Probably not as long as it had felt. Any minute now, Andy and Booker and maybe Nile would rush in guns blazing, and release them. Then they would all fight their way out, like they always did. This experience would haunt them, but they could not dwell on it now, not when there was still a job to do. There would be time later, time to breathe, to hold each other. To wash blood out of each others’ hair. To lie together in the dark, finally able to comfort the other with a touch. To acknowledge how awful, how scary it still was, every time, watching the other die. They could take nothing for granted. They knew this. 

The doors flew open with a bang and Andy, Booker and Nile burst into the room, guns drawn. Nicky and Joe shared a relieved glance as Andy undid the straps holding them down. “What took you so long?” Joe asked jokingly. “Give me a break,” said Andy. “I’m 6000 years old, I don’t get around like I used to.” She handed them weapons as they pulled on their shirts. Joe took a moment to touch his forehead to Nicky’s. They inhaled together once. Exhaled. Later they would rest. Recover. Heal. Now, it was time to fight.


End file.
